How a 130-Year-Old Trade-School Legacy Became a Graduation Requirement.
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In This Guide
Most college-preparatory high schools ask students to pick electives. Lick-Wilmerding asks them to weld, carve, wire, and forge, as a graduation requirement, not an elective. It’s the single most distinctive piece of an LWHS education, and it’s also why the school can’t accept 12th-grade transfer students at all.
Quick Answer for Busy Parents
Every Lick-Wilmerding student must complete a minimum of four semesters of Technical Arts to graduate: 9th-grade Design & Technology, plus two additional semester-long shop courses chosen from Computing, Wearables, Wood, Metal, Digital Fabrication, and Electronics. One of those two must come from a “Design & Craft” category and the other from “Design & Engineering,” ensuring every graduate leaves with real hands-on fabrication experience, not just a transcript line.
Why This Requirement Exists
Lick-Wilmerding’s Technical Arts requirement traces directly to its founding history. The school began in 1895 as the California School of Mechanical Arts, and later merged with the Wilmerding School of Industrial Arts and the Lux School for Industrial Training, schools built explicitly around teaching trade and craft skills. That DNA never left. Today, LWHS is nationally recognized as one of the only college-preparatory independent schools that still requires every student, regardless of college ambitions, to spend real time in a working shop.
That history matters for how the requirement actually feels in practice. It isn’t a modern add-on bolted onto a traditional prep-school educational philosophy to seem well-rounded; it’s the school’s original identity, carried forward for well over a century. A student who struggles to see the value of a required Metal or Wood course is, in a real sense, questioning the founding premise of the school itself, which is worth surfacing honestly before a family commits to four years there.
What Students Actually Take
The requirement starts in 9th grade with Design & Technology, mandatory for every student. From there, students choose two more semester-long courses that meet in the school’s actual shops: Computing, Wearables (jewelry and sewing), Wood, Metal, Digital Fabrication, and Electronics. LWHS structures these into two categories, Design & Craft and Design & Engineering, and requires one course from each, so a student can’t simply repeat their favorite shop twice and call the requirement complete.
| Category | Example Courses |
| Required (9th Grade) | Design & Technology |
| Design & Craft | Wearables (Jewelry & Sewing), Wood |
| Design & Engineering | Metal, Digital Fabrication, Electronics, Computing |
The Shops, Not Just the Classroom
LWHS’s own faculty describe the Technical Arts program as sitting “at the junction of Design & Engineering & Craft in service of Connection & Community & Purpose.” In practice, that means students in the Metal Shop are fabricating and welding real objects, students in Jewelry are casting and finishing wearable pieces, and students in the newer “Building and Programming Intelligent Machines” course are working with sensors and machine intelligence alongside traditional shop tools. A recent Tech Arts 3D Printing class even visited a working furniture fabrication studio in Oakland to see the same techniques used professionally.
This isn’t disconnected from LWHS’s other core commitment either: one Technical Arts course, Fabrications 2, is explicitly framed around “Private Skills with a Public Purpose,” tying the shop floor directly to the school’s civic engagement program and its broader identity as a private school with public purpose.
Why This Matters for Applicants
A family evaluating LWHS should treat the Technical Arts requirement as a real, unavoidable part of four years there, not an optional enrichment a student can quietly skip. This is also precisely why LWHS cannot accept 12th-grade transfer students: there’s no realistic way to complete four semesters of required shop coursework in a single senior year. Students who thrive at LWHS tend to be genuinely curious about building things with their hands, not just tolerant of the requirement as a box to check.
Evaluating Whether LWHS’s Model Fits Your Child?
Cardinal Education helps families understand how a distinctive academic requirement like this one actually plays out day to day.
Applying to LWHS and want the full picture? Cardinal Education helps families build a complete, well-prepared Lick-Wilmerding application, from recommendations to the Cub Conversation.
Related Articles:
How to Get Into Lick-Wilmerding High School: Best Guide for Parents
A Private School With Public Purpose: Lick-Wilmerding’s Four-Year Civic Engagement Program